Unless otherwise indicated herein, the approaches described in this section are not prior art to the claims in this application and are not admitted to be prior art by inclusion in this section.
Digital radiography is a form of X-ray imaging in which digital X-ray sensors are used to generate digital X-ray images, and has multiple advantages over traditional film-based techniques. By bypassing chemical processing, digital radiography is more time efficient, provides digital images for immediate image preview, facilitates image enhancement, and generally requires less radiation to produce an image of similar contrast.
Digital radiography is now used in many applications, including medical diagnostics, veterinary care, dental imaging, industrial inspection, and security. Each of these applications could benefit from a completely portable implementation of a flat panel X-ray acquisition system, i.e., a battery-powered device with full image acquisition, enhancement, and data storage capabilities. Consequently, flat panel display X-ray sensors have been developed with a form factor that can be easily carried and employed as a self-contained, battery powered device. However, the power requirements of such hand-held X-ray sensors can severely limit how long they can be operated without being charged, limiting the utility of the hand-held configuration.
To address this issue, some hand-held X-ray sensors are configured with a sleep function that causes the X-ray sensor to enter a lower power state after a certain time interval has elapsed in which the X-ray sensor remains idle. Thus, when the X-ray sensor is not in use, power consumption of the X-ray sensor is greatly reduced. An important drawback to such a sleep function is that waking the X-ray sensor can be time-consuming and inconvenient. For example, in veterinary applications, the X-ray sensor is typically not in use while an animal to be X-rayed is made ready for imaging, the X-ray sensor is correctly positioned near the animal, and an image acquisition computer external to the X-ray sensor is set up for receiving image data. As a result, there are extended periods of time during which the X-ray sensor can remain in a lower power consumption state, such as an idle state or a sleep state, without impacting the user. Unfortunately, waking the X-ray sensor from such a state can involve a user interrupting a current task (e.g., minding the animal, positioning the X-ray sensor, or positioning the X-ray generator), walking to the image acquisition computer, paging through one or more menus on the image acquisition computer and performing one or more input operations, and returning to the interrupted task. Thus, while the sleep function can extend battery life of a hand-held X-ray sensor, the added inconvenience of such a feature can overshadow its benefits.